Tag Archives: double discipline

Blizzcon is this week! I’m so excited. Okay, I’m not going to the actual Convention, but I’m excited to go to California for the first time, meet up with 10 of my Apotheosis guildmates and meet a bunch of my favorite bloggers and Twitter friends at the various meetups. I’m also excited to play Chrono Trigger on the flight (though I may have to forgo my usual habit of self-medicating on airplanes if I want to get the most out of it).

Anyway, on to the real topic. I’ve been playing a discipline priest as my Horde main since the beginning of Cataclysm and I love it. I love bubbles, I love cooldowns and I love sparkly spell effects. There’s only one thing about it I don’t love – healing with other priests. The thought of playing with another disc priest, the thought of not being able to Shield someone because they have another person’s Weakened Soul on them, drives me mental. Truth be told, this hasn’t happened much. I raid 10s and am usually the only healing priest in the raid. The only times I’ve ever had to heal with another priest is when we’ve been short and needed to borrow from one of the other teams to fill our raid. This has happened maybe half a dozen times, and hasn’t happened in T12 at all. So why am I thinking about this now?

Last night in my Alliance raid, our two disc priests were both assigned to heal tanks on Ragnaros. I, even though I was on my druid and this assignment had zero impact on me, immediately had a (completely internal) freak out.

“Two Disc priests on the same targets?!? But…but the bubbles! And the PoMs! Aaahh! /sob /hide under desk”

Of course, everything was fine. One priest bubbled one tank, one bubbled the other. There was no fighting over weakened soul. The priests did not have meltdowns as they are obviously not raving lunatics like myself (at least not in this regard).

I think my issue stems from a lack of self-control when it comes to healing. Back in Blackwing Descent I filled in for one of our other raid teams and ended up healing with a holy priest. This was the first time I had ever healed with another priest. We were fighting Maloriak. I was healing the main tank and the other priest asked me not to bubble the aberration tank, as he was planning to do it for the Body & Soul speed boost. Of course I said okay, no problem. What’s the first thing I do as soon as I see the aberration tank is taking damage? I bubble him. I apologize over Vent immediately, but then I do it again a minute later. I just can’t help myself. If someone is taking damage, I need to heal it (or prevent it, in this case). For me, not healing someone takes 10x more effort than healing them.

If I was told on my druid to not heal a tank, it would take every ounce of self-control and constant awareness in order to follow that. As soon as my mind wandered for a split second, that tank would have a Rejuv on him. And likely a 3-stack of Lifebloom as well.

The Arm of Hades officers occasionally throw around the idea of going back to 25s in the next expansion. On the one hand, I think this is great because I prefer 25s. On the other, I don’t know that I’d be able to play a Disc Priest in a 25man raid, where I’d likely have other healing priests to contend with. I’m originally a HoT-loving, heal-everyone-I-can-reach druid. I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to learn how to play nice with other priests. I want to Shield and PoM whoever I want.

How do you handle healing with other priests? Do I just need to suck it up, turn down the crazy, and learn to play nice?